More catching up...

 Looking back at last year for artwork that never got posted... one of the things I found was the 'house drawing' for Christmas in St. Michaels, an annual event in our small town. It is a fundraiser for local non profits, held the second weekend in December. There is a parade, breakfast with Santa, a concert and more. A special part of the event is a house tour. All the events are published in a booklet that is given out when tickets are purchased, 

In the 30+ years of this weekend event, members of the St. Michaels Art League (SMAL) have done drawings of the houses on the tour. The drawings are printed in the event booklet and the originals are framed and given to the homeowner as a thank you for opening their home.  

I was given an address and drove into town to take a look. The house had been recently renovated. It seemed that the most used entrance was no longer the 'front door'. I walked down the driveway to find the backyard which had a lovely view of the harbor! There was a large back porch which invited a visitor to just 'be there'.  I took lots of photos and went back home to draw. I debated about adding all the trees. In the end I thought that the house needed to be 'embraced' by foliage.  

It's a fun project but always tests my discipline/need to add color. It's a black and white booklet - I have to restrain myself!

So, on to the other December project - the annual Christmas card. I have a friend who doesn't send Christmas cards, she sends Solstice cards. We had worked on a card for her and her theme of the 'return of the light.' I had also been thinking about the 'light' with another group as we planned a community vigil. I began to explore ideas about that light... and began to paint candles.

I ended up with three images, one on the cover and two inside. 

Front cover

I usually only put a painting on the front of the card. These extra images needed to be painted this year.  I hope your 2025 Christmas was filled with light.

More to come as I continue to catch up...

 

Where have I been???

It's like I just woke up and said, "Where have I been?"  For whatever reason, maybe because I have been looking and snow and ice and single degree wind chill temperatures!) I 'came to' this afternoon. I have been off-line with this blog for a year.  It hasn't been bad weather all that time, but it's just been a year of dropping out of 'stuff'. 

Hopefully, I can rejoin 'life' and catch up with 2025...2026.

I looked back at artwork I did last year - nothing very exciting. I did enter a couple of exhibits. So I'll start there:

For the past few years the St. Michaels Art League has had a show in October themed "Capturing Autumn".  One year I was feeling sort of 'sassy' and had worked on this one. I finished it this year and entered it.  I called it "Autumn Captured"...subtle and sassy...  It started out with a jail cell bars, added a large key hole ...

If you look closely, you can see the key hole next to the double bars 

where the jail door would be...

The next show was the annual Martha Hudson Excellence in Watercolor. One of the paintings I entered a Christmas card from a prior year ...  It's a watercolor on Yupo painting. Yupo is a plastic paper that I have written about before. It doesn't absorb watercolor paint so you can paint on it and then lift the color off.  There are several layers of thick paint which added interesting depth. Such fun to use!

Then I found this painting that I had done a few years ago. It is also done on Yupo paper. I did a little tweaking on it and turned it upside down!  When I first did it, it looked like this.

I had just been playing with color. Dropping paint and probably spraying it with water. As I recall, I picked it up and kept turning it around. I thought it was fun but a little weird and decided to turn it over and paint something on the other side.  I laid it upside down on my board and played with the back of the paper. (My board is a piece of luan plywood that I polyurethaned several years ago.) The next day when I picked it up ...I found all these interesting marks from the board! 

I showed this to my art group (a small group of friends with whom I zoom each week. We support each other and critique our artwork) They suggested turning it upside down...

It's now a completely different painting! And someone suggested calling it "Creation". I like the light from above calling forth a life form beneath. 

Look for more in the next couple of weeks... will explore Christmas card and more... (yeah, I'm really behind!)